Moms with guns: women's political agency in anti-apartheid visual culture

African Arts, Summer, 2009 by Kim Miller

While it was difficult for women to gain acceptance as MK soldiers, motherhood proved to be an even greater obstacle to women's inclusion in the armed struggle. Members of MK were "forbidden to fall pregnant." Furthermore, ANC policy mandated that female MK members would be forcibly fitted with IUDs, which in turn caused infertility in some women (ibid., p. 436). When women did become pregnant, they were exiled: "ANC policy was to send new mothers to Morogoro [Tanzania] with their children." For young women this enforced, distant isolation was perceived as a form of punishment: "there was a slight horror about having children and being sent to Tanzania" (ibid.). Raymond Suttner points out that in addition to fundamentally destabilizing family life, this policy also interfered with or disrupted the women's political work" (Suttner 2008:128). Considered against MK's marginalization of women and its treatment of mothers, this image of female agency presents a troubling contradiction to women's realities at the time. While this image may have visually transformed conventional notions of motherhood in order to serve the political agenda of the ANC, it did not in fact reflect the social and political realities for women at the time.

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It was precisely this pervasive sexism within the ANC, however, that led women to recognize that their fight for gender equality must occur concurrently with the struggle for liberation. Mavivi Manzini, an early ANC member, describes the emerging feminist consciousness among ANC women:

Our view is that women's emancipation in our country cannot be separated from the struggle for national liberation. That's why we have sought to participate actively in the struggle. But we have realized from observing the experiences of other struggles ... that the question of women's liberation has to be addressed now, and not left to later when national liberation has been won. And we think the best way of addressing itis to repeatedly raise the problems of women sharply, because they are usually dealt with only in passing. If we don't raise women's issues, nobody will (Russell 1989:128).

Given the emphasis that the ANC placed on armed struggle, the MK, despite its initial sexist policies, ultimately provided an apt if unexpected space for the empowerment sought by ANC women. "Ironically and unwittingly--and despite the resistance of the military leadership--MK provided an important arena within the movement in which to raise issues of gender equality" (Hassim 2006:97).

Turning these circumstances into an opportunity to defend their own interests and demand gender equality not just within MK, but also within the liberation struggle as a whole, women exposed the "internal gender-based tensions within the movement" (Hassim 2004:452). Mtintso describes the ways in which women worked to gain respect from their male comrades:

[W]omen members of MK had to be taken seriously. They had to explode the myth of women as inferior on a day to-day basis. They did not articulate feminism but had to prove themselves in the field and gain respect. Women as a collective gained respect out of the performances of individual women. Men had to give respect even if it was grudging (Hassim 2006:96).